Archives

Visitors

Meta

She Responded

I posted recently that my mom sent a letter to my birth mother. Since my last few attempts at corresponding with my birth mother (including the floral arrangement I sent her for her birthday in April) have gotten nary a response, I wasn’t sure if she would respond to my mom. But, she did:

Thwarted again!

The IRL friends I’ve shared this with have been mostly interested in how I feel about it and to that I would say this: it is not at all surprising to me and it only emboldens me to find my birth father. If other opportunities arise to work on my birth mother, I will, but she is a dead end and I need to pursue other avenues.

The closest DNA relative matches I got was two third cousins which means that we shared great-great grandparents (and both cousins are of Italian descent (which my birth mother is not) so I’m fairly certain they are on my birth father’s side). One of them has his profile administered by a 3rd party (possibly another family member) and the other hasn’t logged into the website in over a year. I have a slew of 4th-6th cousins, but the one 3rd cousin that’s active on the site seems the most promising. Oh, and the person who is administering his profile lives in MA, hometown of both my birth parents. I haven’t figured out what to say in making contact, yet.

My mom offered to fly me out to MA so that I could either show up on my birth mother’s doorstep and/or find out what church she attends and get a meeting with her priest to see if he’d be of any help. I’m not likely to do either.

For those who are wondering why I don’t just let it go, the simple answer is that I can’t, not yet, anyway, not as long as she is alive and is the only living person to know his name or until I exhaust other avenues. My birth father makes up half of who I am and unless you know how it feels to not know about half of yourself, I can’t explain it.

If you have any suggestions about finding my birth father, please leave a comment.

Next up: I was right, there is something wrong with my health and after three rounds of tests confirmed it’s with my pituitary, I’m scheduled for an MRI.

4 comments to She Responded

There is an eloquence in tone to your birth mother’s writing that doesn’t match how it’s written (unlined white paper; angled writing) or the little I know from what you know and have shared about her. Not sure there is any significance to this, rather merely an observation.

I can’t decipher if she won’t tell you or somehow really doesn’t know.

I’ll admit that I clicked over, hoping beyond hope that she gave you the name. I never expected you to give up, and I think the third cousin sounds promising, especially if he can lead you closer to a first cousin or second cousin. Or he may even have the answer.

Honestly, in this case, I would call instead of write, if you can. I feel like writing gives him too much opportunity to think out his answer, and you need him to be moved by his compassionate side and not overthink this. How to get the phone number? I don’t know. But if you have a name and a town, you may be able to Google it?

I feel as though I understand that you can’t let it go, that you feel it is your right to know your origins and history. That this is driving you. I wonder at what point you will make peace with your history, and respect her clearly given limitations? Her boundaries? I would have pressed on past the initial communication, hoping to breakthrough her reticence. But now I’m feeling like respecting her wishes has to come at a certain point. I wish you would have been given this information, as it seems integral to your psyche.

Hope your tests are resolved fast and with results that can be fixed <3